


Holiday in Dystopia

by Phritzie



Series: Drinking Buddies [7]
Category: Runescape
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Blood and Violence, Extremely Darksided Flirting, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Mild Sexual Content, Murder, Romantic Horrorshow, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 02:37:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13824696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phritzie/pseuds/Phritzie
Summary: Brushes with darkness won't help you create your destiny, but they could put you in an early grave. For once, her friends can be grateful that Felix can't really die.





	Holiday in Dystopia

**Author's Note:**

> Set up for the complex mess of Nomad's Elegy, diverging once more from canonical events. Here's the public service announcement for today: Sliske is a BAD guy. This may contain concepts disturbing to you regardless of age. If none of the tags make you particularly uncomfortable / trigger unmanageable feelings, then please enjoy.

He was on a trip in Sophanem the night it happened.

Darkness falling rapidly, he had made his way over to the market to finalize some purchases before closing time.

His tobacco dealer fled immediately, stall abandoned alongside the majority as people ducked into homes, generally succumbed to chaotic panic, and left to find their families. He lurked in the shadow of the pyramid, waiting. Once the buzzing began it took all his concentration to look the helpless yokel, befuddled and worried as everyone else.

But it was baffling how the earth shook so little, barely a tremor, when that alarum sound accompanying it deafened him. No, he was ravenously interested. _What is that blasted racket?_ His mind raged to get closer, document, observe.

It lasted only minutes before tapering off into a dull hum. The guards at the north gate tripled, at least. From a makeshift mount he could hear the high priest proselytizing fearfully, and he fought against the flow of the crowd that gathered to see past the high bars into the rolling sands as they settled.

What was there had him pulling out teleportation runes.

 

* * *

 

“Like energy and waste? Principally, I'd say you're missing out. Chocolate is so worth it."

"Mm, no. But I liked that bit about attention theory."

They lurched to a stop and flashed across a small bog. "Gods, stop that, _where_ is the fire?”

Each translocating step through the shadows expedited their journey, but she could've gone without the added wooziness. Felix thought he was shifting so often because he was in a hurry. It might've been more likely Sliske was trying to keep her lively. Head lolling, the extent of her lucidity was being devoted to suffering quietly under his admonishments and whatever occasional quip she could summon to throw back.

“I don't know,” he muttered, setting her down by a suspicious divot in the ground. “But you'd best explain physiological pressures later.” The Mahjarrat walked off behind a burial mound, voice disappearing into the night. “Right now, all I can think about is how nice it sounds when you say 'arousal.'”

 _Ugh._ Her gaze turned upward, annoyed. _Ingald would hate him. He would. Wouldn't he?_

Unfortunately, he wasn’t gone long, returning with a broad item. The sky was a sluggish blur of brown clouds, darkening his face as he hefted a spade and then drove it into the soft ground.

Felix stared as he stepped back. “Did you lose your keys?”

Rather than answer he simply lifted her in his arms once more, pivoting on a heel back toward the landscaping tool. Where it'd been, a rapidly collapsing hole was wearing away the wormy earth. It fell into itself for quite some ways before stopping, perhaps a meter in diameter.

 _No,_ Felix thought, stunned. _They'd get on._

Into the portal they went, and she was shocked again by the realization that they hadn't entered the Barrows crypts, but rather an unclean stairwell. The spade was nowhere to be seen.

She'd been tired before, but the memory of so many nights attempting to gain entry to his fortress and the _incredible_ slog of Zamorak's poorly hatched heist was exhausting.

“I could've done that this _whole time?"_

Speckles of dirt floated upward, and he narrowly dodged a large chunk of it as the hole above them reformed, indistinguishable from the rest of the ceiling.

Sliske shouldered open a door at the end of a long descent. “Forgive the mess. I haven't quite finished cleaning up after your tantrum.”

"Oh _, my_ tantrum." Felix scowled up at him, and when he ducked low beneath an unfinished stone archway their eyes met just long enough for her to lose her irritation. His low huff of laughter echoed around them.

Their destination turned out to be a library, if one believed libraries also served as repositories for alchemical and hematological objects of every disgusting flavor. Most of it failed to capture her fading attention, the outlines of countless vials and yellowed posters gliding by unrecorded. Her back found a long shay, draped in cloth and giving enough that her eyelids fluttered, exhausted.

“If you do happen to fall asleep, don't be alarmed when you awaken,” Sliske said seriously, somewhere near enough to feel on her skin. She heard his smile. “Or do be, but I'd prefer you open and raring to go.”

_Enigmatic bastard._

Diminishing footsteps and the scrape of a chair.

As she started to doze, the brief whisper of a page turning.

Felix weighed the consequences and slept.

 

* * *

 

In the morning there was a commotion. Someone had arrived at Shantay Pass and promptly collapsed, dehydrated and wearing little. He was brought to Osman arm in arm by the wandering patrol of the palace guards, raving about a demon and trying to encourage people to gather a group of capable warriors to fight it.

 _A mirage,_ they whispered.

No one was taking him seriously, at least not anyone they had questioned.

Leela set down her pen and leveled a hard look at her eldest scout, a woman just shy of fifty. “Do we know anything else?”

Jaya shook her head, peppery hair already curling at her neck from the rising heat. “We do not. Only a report from Nardah, a voluntary informant by the name of Ali the Wise. He claims that it is not a fabricated monster, as our Ali’s hallucinations would suggest, but a large structure. He likened it to a tower, actually. When we spoke I could tell he was quite shaken.” Her posture revealed her distress. "It is worth mentioning that Ali the Wise is a hardy man."

Sighing, the spymaster waved her dismissal of the scout. “Alright. Please get me visual confirmation. A sketch, some corroboration from our own. Anything. I'd like to be on top of this before we start sending out agents.”

Jaya lifted two fingers and left. Leela plucked the topper from the deep blue pitcher on her desk and drank, brooding. Beside the water jug lay a note she'd discovered the previous night. Her eyes squeezed shut at the sight of it.

_Love you, kitten._

_Please don't look for me._

A difficult request to honor. More so, knowing where she might be already.

“Just don't be dead,” Leela whispered. “I’ve enough trouble on my hands without needing to collect you from his door.”

 

* * *

 

This wasn't real, but the memory was, and so her hands shook as Felix pulled her weapon off its strap on her back.

He devoured the contents of the pot with sickening, long pulls, throat bulging as it avidly sucked down the poisoned tithe. Shuddering, he cast the silver vessel away, lapping up the remnants from his cheeks and squashed nose.

Dessous was done feasting. The barest moment of doubt crept through her mind as he eyed her next. Then, the concoction took effect. He started gargling angrily. A gaunt hand burned black by incorruptible purity and shaped from her nightmares grasped at his smoking esophagus.

Relief and rage. _That's right, you ugly fuck._ Lightheaded from blood loss, she whipped her bow against a nearby tombstone and relished in the booming crack it made. The vampyre lord recoiled, venous wings expanding against the light of the moon.

All Felix could recollect caring about were his ragged teeth and horrifically long tongue, hissing a reply in colorful profanities. Gut distended with her lifeforce, the vampyre took a single step forward. “You tricked me,” he seethed.

“I did.” She nocked an arrow, snarling. “Now come and meet your end.”

 

* * *

 

Expression neutral, he watched her sleeping body battle nothing and sighed.

_This is not how I wanted to spend our weekend together, my dear._

There had been… developments in his absence. A claim for power that required his interference. Resentful of the mage’s fastidious work, he had to act soon. There wasn’t time to deliberate over pesky details, and he would never trust anyone else to do it. Mainly because they would probably fail. _Evasive little thing that you are_.

It would be easier to get it done with if she was unconscious, supine and vulnerable. Sliske breathed out as his fists tightened. But he felt so gauche to do it when she couldn’t fight back.  _It's unsporting, that's what it is._

She rolled over and started to snore.

 _No, I can’t._ He forced himself away. _Perhaps one day you’ll be thankful for my weakness._

A laughable prospect. But Sliske wasn’t amused as he closed the door. There was much to prepare for, containment facilities to slap together, and Relomia needed to be informed of his departure.

 

* * *

 

When Felix woke it wasn't from dreaming of enemies long dead, but because of how unbearably hot she was.

Forcing herself into a crunch, she tore off the blanket covering her face and breathed deep. It slid softly down her legs before pooling in a heap, taken by gravity. Wet gasps met with rancid dust and her hair clung to her face, slick with sweat.

_What were you trying to do, smother me?_

Felix planted unsteady boots on the floor and took in her surroundings, only moderately energized from her rest.

Her eyes traced the outline of innumerable anatomical charts. Unnervingly exact diagrams and realistic sketches defining cross sections of everything ranging from the humanoid to quadrupeds to sea creatures decorated the room, sometimes overlapping where they covered the walls.

“Hell,” Felix said. “I'm in hell.”

 _And I’m alone._ Sliske was nowhere to be seen. The sharp ache inside her whispered _behind you_ , but when she laid a troubled forearm across her knees and twisted to look, there were only more bookshelves, full with volumes and the odd box all crammed together.

 _Oh, damn._ Those same eyes slid shut as she remembered the events of the previous night, assuming enough time had passed that it was day.  _I really did say all of that._

Mortified by the realization that the Mahjarrat would probably take up ribbing her with the name  _sweetheart_ , Felix pushed thoughts of misplaced affection from her mind. 

Gently poking a hand up her left sleeve, she wiggled free the disc Zaros had created for her and examined it.

_You don’t look very special._

Felix turned his gift between her fingers and it ate up the candlelight, reflecting nothing.

 _I wish you came with instructions._

Resolving to study the item later, she squirreled it away again.

Exploring didn't yield especially exciting results. She discovered the only door led into an unlit hallway, and that in his very creepy library Sliske had an _all-inclusive_ collection of deadly reagents. Some of them she didn’t even recognize. Why he bothered when he'd demonstrated a serious competency for homicide with nothing more than his abilities, she wasn't sure.

Eventually she stumbled upon a well-preserved, unborn _something_ in a jar, seemingly with pride of place on a shelf too high to reach, and lost her interest in snooping. “Alright. Leaving now.”

And better, she had a goal. As the World Guardian slipped out the door to creep around the stronghold, carefully avoiding anything that even sounded undead, she looked out for signs of the living.

Specifically, the person she'd unwillingly abandoned when last she was here. Ducking past a tittering mask, her attempts to reason out fates for the smith varied from realistic to fantastical. Though Linza hadn't made it out with them, perhaps she'd managed to run, to hide somewhere or bargain for her survival.

_Maybe. I suppose the chances are dismal._

Felix wasn't hopeful her search would yield anything more positive than a half-starved woman in a jail cell.

_But whether she’s dead or not, I've got to know. It's my responsibility to find out._

His soul gave her a relative location to avoid. Felix used that advantage to the best of her ability, skirting the pull of the tether and wracking her memory for directions. _Where was that area?_ The place where Samwell died. It had been relatively large, but there weren't very many enormous, theatrical gates in this part of the stronghold.

 _They could be together,_  she thought, as his soul encouraged her to change direction, to return to the library. _Damn._  She wiggled the knob again. That door was locked.

Felix turned down a new way and was immediately forced to backtrack. Immovable pieces of large rubble had blocked the low tunnel completely.

_I could've sworn there were cells here._

More locked doors. More jovial mask watchdogs.

 _Nothing familiar._

Felix came to a fork, tracking a distant ruckus, and scowled. Another passageway walled off by debris impeded her path.

“Useless,” Felix muttered, casting around for options. It was clear she was lost.

Then, out of the air to her right and just beyond a wood-reinforced entry into a dimly lit hall, she distinctly heard a hammer strike. The sound of it almost drew a yelp out of her.

 _Promising! Please don't be a trap!_ Felix held her breath and crouched low, back to the wall as she neared the doorway. Solid clashes of metal against metal punctuated the silence, making her ever more conscious of her footsteps.

Gripping the splintery wood of the door frame, she waited until the noise started up again and peered inside.

Sure enough, there she was, barely a few meters away facing an anvil. Her blond head was bent in concentration, firmly working a strut into shape. It yielded to her strength, becoming long and blunt. She held the dull material up for inspection and adjusted her hold minutely. A furnace crackled in the corner, temperature low. The room appeared to be specifically equipped for metallurgy.

Felix lay back against the wall and breathed. _Okay. Weird, but otherwise excellent._

When she looked again Linza was frowning over her shoulder, staring into the middle distance. Plate-reinforced knees made to turn and Felix ducked out of sight, mouth scrunched.

A moment passed. “Sliske?” Her voice was troubled by the slightest wobble, as if afraid. Felix relaxed. The second good news of the day, chiefly because it meant her friend still felt fear. _Doesn't sound like you're a minion of darkness._

She sent a quick prayer to the universe and revealed herself. One foot following the other, she stepped into the room with hands raised. Felix kept her voice friendly but firm. “Hey. Don’t panic, but—”

Linza dropped the strut and they flinched as it resonated like a bell against the anvil, tumbling noisily to land on the rough stones under their feet. Felix stopped where she was, palms out.

“Felix?” Linza regarded her with wide eyes, disbelief and fear warring for prominence there. “Is that really you?” She took quick stock of her black robes, brows pinching. “Why are you dressed like... that?”

Her smile didn’t come without a fight. “The one and only.” A lump was forming in her throat and she gulped stubbornly. _No crying. Tired of crying._ “Seems like we both have some things to share. I swear, I didn't mean to leave you behind.” _Not to say that excuses it._  “I've been looking for you.”

If she'd been expecting a specific response, it wasn't severe guilt. Linza folded her gloved hands nervously before releasing them, looking down and away. “You're right— we do. I'm sorry.” She picked up her fallen metalwork as she spoke, brushing away invisible dirt. “So, so sorry.”

“I'm confused.” Linza gestured for Felix to come closer and hesitantly she did, hands lowering slightly. “What do you mean, you're sorry?”

“I wasn't sure I would ever see you again,” Linza confessed sadly, racking the strut on a bar overhanging the anvil. It swung once or twice before stilling. She turned to her and they embraced, a short affair that represented their grief. Her whisper stirred the air. "He threw you so hard..."

Felix stepped back and eyed the ashy particles on her apron. “Well, I'm here now, and if you're willing to put your trust in me again I think I can get us out of here,” she replied levelly. Her hope scattered when Linza shook her head, expression defeated. She felt a gentle tug and pushed down her igniting anger. _Fuck off. I’m busy._ “Why?”

Her green eyes closed as Linza spoke. “I know you'll hate me, but it's safe here.” She held a glove up when Felix moved to speak, continuing. “I made a deal with him, Felix. He's the only one who can protect me.”

 _Great._ Feeling nauseous, she pressed a shaky hand to the growing throb in her chest. “Quickly. What kind of deal?”

 

* * *

 

Relomia was crushed.

He returned the recipe book and excused himself, parting with a reminder. "It must be timed perfectly. Be prepared."

In another lifetime, she had dreamed of fanciful things. People that courted others in kindness, knocking on doors wearing demure smiles and presenting bouquets with the purest intentions. Perhaps the occasional knight, a local embodiment of heroism. Childhood's quintessential fantasy of love.

"I'll get everything ready," Relomia said, feeling low. Her contribution to his successes always made her happy but today, her enthusiasm was tainted by the knowledge that things would not go the way he thought.

This, as much as Relomia detested to think it, was a horrible plan. She  _had_ been a girl once, soft and naive. Now she was a creature made from darkness, and the shadows whispered truths about the heart that her master ignored all too often.

 _You're going to chase her away_. She longed to tell him, grabbing handfuls of lawfully blue spelldust to begin chalking the portal. _You can never come back from that._

 

* * *

 

At her insistence they moved to another location, whispering as they sneaked. Linza showed her how to get from the furnace room, through a series of overly convoluted halls and service doors, to an area that could've been meant for boarders at one point. _In the very distant past._

“You think he had guests?” Felix asked, holding up a beam of wood so that Linza could get into the abandoned kitchens. She reciprocated, allowing her to duck underneath with a wince.

“This place is very, very old,” she confirmed nervously. She checked the room in a thorough sweep for any unusual disturbances. It had been a while since she was last there, at least two days. Linza still wasn’t certain if he knew she came here. “I wouldn’t be surprised by that.”

“Ah, good. I bet there’s booze.”

Before she could turn to stop her Felix was already picking her way over some rubble to get into a shallow cellar, heaving a sack of very expired flour out of her way in the process. It landed a scant foot away from her, a hard lump too many years past its date to explode into a white cloud. She leaned back against the ruined doorway and breathed, heart weak. “Goodness, you really shouldn’t do that.”

A dreary moan drifted out of the hole. “Linza, the man is a terror, but he _carried me_ here and then left me unattended. Me. What could he expect, my best behavior? I think it’s alright if I raid the liquor cabinet.” There was a moment in which all that could be heard was glass rattling. “Here we go.”

She emerged with wine, passing her a bottle before walking over to test the remains of a countertop faded beige by disuse. When Felix gave it a stiff kick, it didn’t budge. She lowered herself onto the surface and started working the cork out.

“When did you become such a lush?” Linza wondered, staring down at the alcohol in her hands.

Felix pried at the compressed phellem, scowling when a few bits were lost into the wine. “Who can say. Why did you have to steal from the Dragonkin? I mean, Guthix, you had so much talent.”

 _I know._ “It’s done with now.” That earned her a snort.

"It's not done until we break your shitty, no-win deal with that jackass." Wine splashed as she upended the bottle for a long drink.

Linza sighed, relenting. “Why did he bring you back here?”

For some reason that one made Felix choke a little. She reigned in the fit after a few quiet coughs and grimaced. “Again, not much to report.”

“Your best guess?” She stared as the guardian poorly contained her laughter, low chuckling that was distorted by the neck of the bottle.

“A— a passionate weekend, maybe?” Her eyes widened, and Felix threw her head back in response, wheezing.

Linza used her free hand to rub her throat, embarrassed for her. “Is it really that funny?” _Something so disgusting must be_ a little _scary._ “I mean, Gods. You should be very careful. He could have!”

Maybe they were losing it, prisoners to failure and loss, because that only made Felix more insensible. Linza abandoned her unwanted wine and stepped forward, minding the obstacles on the floor, and touched Felix on the shoulder gently.

“Please stop, I’m so sorry." She placed her other hand over her breastplate, contrite. "That was a horrible thing to say.”

Her snickering tapered off and Felix sighed, eyes sober.

“Linza. Look at me,” Felix muttered. Indicating the dark robes she was wearing with a limp finger, her eyebrows rose. “I’m not kidding.”

A beat of quiet confusion passed. Linza visually absorbed the clothing, its apparent make and nature. And caught up.

 _Oh._ The guardian's expression didn’t change, mouth pursed as Felix took another long swig.

“Wow. Goodness. That’s…” Linza wasn’t sure what to say. Far from young and innocent, she simply hadn’t ever conceived of such a relationship.

Felix scooted away and spat a chunk of cork onto the ruined floor. “Horrible? Yeah. It really is.”

 

* * *

 

_Liar._

He listened to them chatter about their respective woes, waiting. The opportunity to carry through with responsibility would come by sooner or later but it was grating on him, having to suffer the slings of insult without being able to chime in.

 _I seem to recall you vocalizing a reasonably_ high _appreciation for our meetings,_  he might've sneered, arms folded. But the moment passed. At any rate, Sliske was only keeping a certain servant around for her proficiency with mechanical repair. If she didn’t hop back to it soon, he considered revealing his presence anyway to scold her indolence.

“Do you mean… I don’t even want to ask,” Linza said quietly, face pale. “Are you alright?”

Felix kicked her feet up onto the nearest surface, which just happened to be a stool rounding the corner on two hundred years old. The hem of her robes rode higher, exposing the tops of her boots. “No, not like that. It’s complicated, and the details are probably graphic enough that I shouldn’t share them with you out of hand,” she explained, pausing for a sip. Sliske bristled at the implication. 

“Well, what about it is complex? Wait— is _that_ why he kidnapped Meg, Mary, and Samwell? Some lovers argument?” Her irate skepticism was delightful, but he hardly had time to enjoy it.

“Probably _not_ ,” Felix replied, eyes narrow. She gestured her nearer, darting a look at the door. “Alright. You can’t tell anyone this, but _especially not Leela_.”

 _And who is that?_ He made a vindictive note to make good use of the information in the future as Linza swore secrecy. “It’s not like I can ever leave this place. You may as well be speaking to a dead woman.”

Her angry snarl startled both smith and Mahjarrat, a hand flying to her armored chest as he inhaled sharply through his nose. “No,  _I’m not._ You are _alive_ , damn it, and we’ll find a way to get you out of here.” She composed herself, smile wary. “Alright. Are you listening?”

Linza nodded, eyes wide and eyebrows very low. She shook her hands impatiently. “Yes. Out with it, please.”

His strange fixation hummed and polished off her pilfered drink. “Fuck,” she muttered, head turning as she stretched her neck out. Huffing, her hand squeezed the wrist holding on to the empty bottle. “I can’t do it, this is awkward.”

Linza was championing his annoyance well. “Felix, don’t. I’m not going to judge you.”

He groaned, short of patience. _Liars! Both of you!_ Sliske longed to scratch it into the wall. _This is ridiculous, I’m not going to sit around and listen to this nonsense—_

“You can't make grossed out noises.” Felix hopped off the counter and raised her arm, waving the bottle back and forth slowly. “It’s… really good. The sex, I mean. It’s so good I can hardly believe it.”

The smith gasped, horrified by the very idea, and because he was so distracted by her admission he barely registered what was happening. The wine bottle went careening through the distance between them, shattering right where he would be standing were it not for the fact that he was concealed by shadows.

_Drat._

 

* * *

 

Tight with tension and breathing hard, Felix straightened and looked at Linza. “Also, I think he’s here. Somewhere. It’s really hard to tell.” Her hands found the front of her robes, tugging inelegantly. “Not just because I’m drunk. The tether is a crappy indication of real position.”

Darkness pulsed. When it receded Sliske was standing there, looking fit to hurt and surrounded by the same antique, wooden detritus. Something about the way his figure was pressed up against the ceiling told her the kitchens were never meant for Mahjarrat.

“Afternoon,” he greeted, face sour. Felix suppressed another inappropriate bout of laughter.

 _Serves you fucking right._ She took a deep breath and turned her wrists up, fingers splayed. “Well? Got anything to say for yourself, eavesdropper?”

“Just this.” Sliske offered her an unamused smile, eyes empty of compassion. His hand moved shortly and Linza fell to her knees, breathless and shaking. “If you’d like her to live along enough to shine my shoes tomorrow, you’ll come with me.”

Felix looked quickly between them and felt her liquid confidence fail the test. “Shit, fine. Let her go.”

His head tilted forward a little as he released control over the smith’s windpipe, lips quirking lazily when she could only produce hoarse coughs. “Excellent choice, my dear. Now, if you’re done with gossip, shall we?”

Apparently Sliske only had patience for the rhetorical today. He took them in a flight of darkness, the world around her doing the choosing as to her stomach's position, and she wobbled when her feet found the ground under her free of junk. Undoubtedly, they were still within the stronghold, but the room they occupied then was far brighter and had a sharply contrasting lavishness to it that Felix couldn’t put an exact name to.

 _Gods. Linza, you have to get away from here…_ She would fight dragonkin agents herself, if she had to.

As he dusted some glass from his boots she turned in a tipsy swivel. “What the hell is this?” It looked like some unholy combination of a pleasure den and a morgue.

And the more she took in the more confusing it got. The floor was carpeted but the _walls_ were... well, the paint was its least defining feature. There were places that looked like they could've once housed corpses, reliquary openings that recessed deeply enough to hold the tallest human. They spanned the length of each wall, boxing them in, and stacked to the ceiling perhaps twenty high.

Additionally, softly draping silks bathed various pieces of furniture in a range of reds, creating deep shadows that strained her eyes. What wasn’t plush and yielding had a garish black lacquer coating, comprising several racks, tables, and sloping canvases. The racks, particularly, didn't seem to be for holding coats.

_You absolute hound. This is the most deviant shit I’ve ever seen._

Sliske regarded her quietly before crossing to one of the tables across from them. It's surface was supporting a tray of fine crystal. He poured an amber-colored liquid into two glittering chalices and lifted one in a mock toast, not even bothering to spare her a glance before downing it. Refilling his glass, he turned to her and froze.

“Yes?” His eyes flicked over her critically, narrowing.

 _Uh, what._ Felix took stock of her body and straightened abruptly as she realized her hips were leaning a little salaciously into the arm of the nearest sofa, legs crossed and shoulders back as her hands gripped the slippery silk. “Nothing.” _Gods, I’m drunk._  She smoothed unsure fingers over her hair, dizzy. _Leave me alone._

That smile, the one that drove her to drink in the first place, slowly crept over his face. He bit his lip and came near enough to offer her one of the chalices. “I have some news.”

Felix made no effort to conceal her disgust with him. “You just needed to _tell me_ something? And… that required choking out Linza, why?” Sliske hardly wavered, presenting the crystal glass insistently. She took it with a great deal of hesitation, avoiding his gloved fingers.

The Mahjarrat breathed deeply, indicating the junction of his own neck and shoulder with a sharp gesture. “You’re bruising up.”

She slapped a hand over the spot, glaring when it indeed stung tenderly. “Great. I’ll have enough to start a collection soon. News?” He lifted his honeyed drink, head shaking as he swallowed, and drifted closer.

“Not if we aren't quick,” he whispered, brushing by her left side to discard his empty chalice in the crook of the sofa. She watched him as he leaned back and leveled a feverish look at her. Traitorous arms raised, and he stepped in, hands closing around hips. Sliske hummed, chin down. “They’ll fade.”

“What news?” Felix asked desperately, eluding his kiss. Lips smelling of brandy ghosted across her cheek. “Gods, Sliske. Please. Enough of this piecemeal bullshit.”

His exhale was labored. “Are you certain you want to move on to that?” A dry inquiry, provoking. Thumbs started to rub circles into the muscle over her hipbones. She shivered in an inescapable loss of composure.

Felix wasn’t sure what was supposed to come after or before whatever it was he needed to tell her, and her head jerked with the strength of her nod, irritated. “If it won’t kill me. Spit it out already.”

His face did something very strange then, something tricky. Sliske aborted a smile before it could rise properly. “Right.” She gasped as his hands tightened on her, pressing her hard into the sofa. “In that case, you had better listen carefully. I’m not certain I can say this again.”

She was too close to him then to see outside the working of his throat, the pale gray stripes of his ancestry moving in time with the contraction. Felix forced herself not to mirror the motion, still and quiet despite her heart’s intoxicated ire. “Listening.”

“In just a few short hours a catastrophe many months in the making will befall the world,” he muttered into her hair, and she could hear his frown, the building certainty. “You are so very precious to me, Felix. I want you to remember that.” He pulled away, expression guarded. “Now, you have a choice. I’d prefer you take the first option.”

An incredibly dangerous edge was creeping into his voice. She didn’t like it one bit.

_The last time you gave me an ultimatum like that you tried to take my soul._

_Catastrophe?_

Her eyes darted to the aromatic chalice cradled between their tangled arms, and the part of him inside her writhed in response.

Without a thought she cast it to the floor, mouth open. Crystal glass shattered, sparkling against the carpet, and the drink seeped into the material there. A dark stain spread at their feet.

Sliske considered the mess carefully. “That was the first option.”

_No._

“You tried to poison me.” Felix was deaf to her own tone. How or when or why, she wasn’t certain, but when he didn’t dispute her accusation she scrambled backward, nerves fire.

She only made it partway up the arm of the sofa, rooting for purchase as her boots slipped on the silk covering. He tugged her back and she fell, neck striking the wooden frame with enough force to stun her momentarily. In that short time he was upon her, shaking.

“No one else will ever do this to you,” he promised, yellow stars in a black ocean. “Never.”

In her horror she forgot to keep track of his hands.

The noise was gruesome.

Wet squelching viscera, compartments that were never meant to be unified. Abdominal muscles tore into ribbons. Felix couldn’t breathe. Pain hit in waves, first sharply from the serrated edge of whatever he'd used to stab her, and then, worse in some ways, a deep, burning throb that seemed to travel away from the site of the wound.

 _I shouldn’t look_ a voice said, distant, maybe not even hers. She cast her eyes down anyway, mouth opening further at the sight of his hand wrapped around the knife, grip straining. Sliske still had a hold on her waist. That hand trembled as she'd never seen before.

“You fuck,” Felix croaked, unable to tear her gaze from it; the knife sliding out, the spurting, his bloodied hand, dripping with what was spilling down the blade and over the pommel. “You bastard fuck.”

Vision reeling, she was forced to look at him as leathery palms moved to cradle her face, so very fond, and so very _fake_.

Her hearing was coming and going, and Felix realized that she must be in shock. _I haven’t died in a while._ He was speaking, the same words over and over, but she couldn’t hear them for the life of her.

_I am. I'm going to die._

 

* * *

 

Felix paled rapidly, mouth moving in harsh profanity but unable to speak. He did his best to ease her back onto the sofa, morbidly thankful for the crimson color of it as she began to bleed out.

Of all the possible inconveniences to be afflicted with, Sliske didn’t understand why he couldn’t stop the tremors.

Every inch of him was vibrating. He firmly reminded himself that it didn’t matter, because it was done, but not _over_. Never _over_.

Felix was fine. This body would be dead soon, but she was going to be fine.

_It’s alright. I’m coming with you._

“Relax,” Sliske muttered thickly, cupping her face. One of his gloved fingertips smeared red at her temple and his chest hitched, a forgotten entity deep inside rebelling against the sight. “Relax, relax.”

 _What have you done_ and  _this was unwise_ called voices from afar, voices he knew the faces to and never wanted to hear anything about this from. _Leave us. This is private._

Her eyes were losing their luster and beyond the intense drumming in his soul he realized Felix was unsuccessfully trying to hurt him, clawing at his arms and chest weakly.

" _Relax_ , Felix."

Sliske wanted so badly to kiss her. But there was nothing, no way to actualize it, permission absent in her struggle.

_Rights revoked._

He laughed feebly through the strangling beginnings of self-contempt.

It took minutes. Her arms finally fell limp. Felix breathed in raggedly as she summoned the last of her strength to glare holes in him. Sliske forced himself to meet it.

 _Yes, I know. You made it hard._ His thumbs couldn't stop stroking her cheeks.  _It didn't have to be hard._

The death rattle was coming. He would be there for it; the last slip of air this version of her would breathe. The final stroke of blood this heart of hers would ever pump.

“Relax.” A mantra. It was as much for his benefit as it was for hers. “Relax.”

Sliske pressed their foreheads together and waited for the poison on the knife to take effect.

 

* * *

 

She woke up in his office screaming bloody murder.

Their combined strength was hardly enough to restrain her, Icthlarin speaking words of comfort and sensitivity in his hard, raspy voice. Never had she so eventfully reentered the world of the living, not even the first time she had died, spine bent and broken in ways that took him hours to understand let alone undo.

A stabbing, but with the added insult of an incredibly deadly strain of nightshade. Harold was not in any way impressed, but the overkill nature of the attack spoke volumes. Whoever had done it really, really wanted to make sure she died.

Green glowed around them as they wrestled her to the floor, sobbing.

“ _Fuck him!_ "

The stained glass portraiture in the windows surrounding his mount rattled in their frames.

 _"Fuck that asshole forever!_ ”

It took a while, but eventually her terror subsided, replaced by a kind of surly muteness that wouldn't so easily abate. He tried to ask her about it, but she wouldn't answer, glaring at an unseen foe over his tattered shoulder.

To utilize their time Icthlarin spoke calmly and surely about why he was there, explaining the situation with Nomad's army and the soul obelisk. She listened, head ticking up and down in a shallow nod every now and then.

Harold went to the trouble of summoning her some protection in the interim. His enormous trunk contained many of her possessions. There were favorites, things she would ask him to retrieve, for a price, that calmed her insensible mind in the wake of previous tragedies, and for a moment he distracted himself with the rote task.

There was another outlier. He raised his hand, palm up, and relaxed it. The World Guardian had brought only one thing _with_ her this time, a curious object. He had a guess at its origins. Black and round, it fit very easily in the crook of his skeletal hand.

“This belongs to you,” Harold muttered neutrally. She accepted the trinket quietly, still absorbed in the briefing she was receiving from the Menaphite god. With all the patience of a caregiver, he laid her requested armor and bow at her side and interrupted Icthlarin with a bony finger. “You should dress. It will make you feel better.”

She did, stripping out of the white deathshroud to strap on hides and secure lightmail. They looked at one another, an unspoken question traveling through the air.

He decided to address the problem directly. “Felix.” Bow across her back, fully suited for combat, the guardian looked replete in form but empty at heart. “What happened this time?”

Her brown eyes scanned his glowing ones carefully. When she spoke, her voice was low and angry. “Maybe I’ll tell you on the way. Let’s go.” Her back was already to them, making for the Noumenon.

Icthlarin frowned, swinging a skull-tipped staff into his palm. “We should discuss this further.”

“You know there isn’t time,” Harold muttered, touching his shoulder meaningfully as he passed. "You can't protect everyone forever."

She was gone, a boot disappearing through the door to the Underworld with a quiet hush of energy. An impatient voice echoed in its wake.

“Let’s _go!_ ”


End file.
